


courage of stars

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 02:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7024474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The GoT/CS au no one ever asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	courage of stars

_My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel._

She is four and ten when the world crumbles around her. She doesn’t know it at the time, of course - at the time it seems to her the world has expanded infinitely, beyond her wildest imaginings.

It begins with a visit from the king of Misthaven, and all that such things entail. They hold a great feast in his honor, and Emma is immediately smitten with the boy who will one day be king. His name is Neal, and she is sure she will marry him, and give him beautiful, smiling heirs to the throne.

He smiles a pretty smile, and he dances like a dream, and Emma blushes when he presses a kiss to her fingers at the end of the set. 

Anna giggles and presses her face into Emma’s shoulder to hide her embarrassment at the attention the princes cousin pays to her. Elsa stares at her gloved hands, flexing her fingers and watching the revelry. Snow sits with their mother, smiling primly as her eyes take in the room, and only Emma knows it is a calculated stare. Everyone underestimates the heir to Arendelle, the eldest daughter of Queen Ingrid, remarking on her pale beauty and the sweet curve of her lip, on the thick and heavy fall of dark hair that curls about her shoulders. 

Emma has looked to her older sister and seen the kind of strength that would send a man to his knees in a breath.

She has always been grateful for that, for it means that Emma will never have to steel her back and fight for her titles. She will always have Snow to care for Arendelle.

She is free to laugh behind her hand and flirt with princes from other kingdoms, free to daydream of a life away from the bristling cold of this place, of a brave knight with a kind smile who can weave her fine words.

She has never been away from home, has never had a chance to miss it. It will not be long before she misses it more than anything the world would offer her.

She is barely yet a woman, and when her father tells her they will sail for Misthaven to serve the king, to keep the peace between their realms, she dreams of royal weddings, she dreams of great balls. She ruffles her youngest brothers hair, and laughs at Henry’s protest. She presses a kiss to Snow’s cheek, she promises she will write Anna every day, and she holds her mother tightly, begs her to come with them, but there must always be a Queen in Arendelle, and Ingrid clutches Emma close for longer than she should.

She barely thinks to say goodbye to Killian, even as he mounts his horse not five steps from where she is being corralled into the fine carriage of the Queen. They have never been close - when her father took Killian in as his ward Ingrid had not spoken to Robin for weeks, and Emma, her mothers daughter to the end, had taken his presence as a personal affront. He has always preferred the company of Elsa and Snow, regardless, and though she has grown used to him in her life, her mind is so preoccupied with the reality of all her wildest dreams coming true that she barely wonders where he’ll go now that he is no longer welcome in Ingrid’s castle. Elsa and Snow, they call him brother, but Emma has always understood that he is not one of them. 

Still. Breathless with excitement, ready for adventure, she smiles softly at him as he settles a hand on the pommel of the saddle, and, seemingly surprised, he smiles back, nods. 

They will not see each other for nearly six years, years in which Emma will wonder if he regrets, as she does, not clinging a little tighter to their home before they let go.

\------

The Queen is cruel - with a clever spark of meanness in her eye and a bite to every word, at first Emma takes the Queen’s compliments at face value, but soon Elsa’s eyes flash with every remark on their ‘charming’ manners, and Emma comes to realize that Hades wife finds Emma and her family to be below her. 

Still, Neal peacocks about, trying to impress her with amusing words and turns of phrase, and Emma is so enamored she fails to notice that every joke he makes is at another’s expense, every time he laughs it is at someone else’s misfortune. 

She still dreams of fine clothes and fancy parties, still imagines what her life will be like as a princess, as a queen, as a wife who is loved dearly by her husband. And Neal is so close to her dream, so close to everything she has ever wanted, that she begins to lose sight of her white knight with his beautiful songs and his deep and abiding love.

Misthaven is everything she could want - and if she squints and lies to herself, she can continue to believe such a thing is true.

\------

She hears the King’s raised voice from her fathers rooms, and is surprised. The King she has come to know has never spoken above a rasped whisper, in a voice that sends shivers down her spine, but now his yells echo down the corridor. 

They speak of a dragon across the sea. 

Emma has never believed in the whimsical tales of dragons and magic, even now, after Neal has shown her the skulls of the beasts hidden below the castle. 

When he father raises his voice in turn, Emma shrinks against the wall and slips away, already fearing for the state of her betrothal to Prince Neal. He is everything she has ever wanted, with his charming grin and his clever eyes, and she fears her father has ruined everything by stroking the ire of the king.

Later that night he will gather Elsa and Emma in their room, whisper softly to them, tell them they are leaving - returning home, far away from this game of thrones, far away from a man mad enough to wish a girl (a child) dead for her fathers imagined sins.

Emma will hate him for it.

And she will hate herself for those feelings for many moons to come.

\------

They kill her father at midday, and Emma screams. They tell the people of Misthaven that the honorable Lord Robin is a traitor, and when Neal waves the executioner forward Emma feels the aftershocks of the walls around her crumbling.

Hades is dead, and Neal will soon be crowned king, and Emma longs for home.

The Queen watches her with curious eyes, her long red hair curled and tucked carefully over one shoulder. 

The whispers of her fathers crimes follow her through the halls of the castle. The rumors of Neal’s true parentage slip from the loose lips of the commonfolk, and Emma does not look at them, does not speak to them, but her mind screams to remind them of what they risk should the Queen’s spies hear them. 

King Hades made a deal with the devil, they say. Emma wants to remind them that Hades was the devil himself, but she doubts they care for semantics. The boy is no true king, they tell each other behind their hands, voices low, eyes shifting to and fro to make sure they are not overheard. But Emma can hear them - and she knows she is not the only one.

Still, they bow before Neal the day he is crowned, and Queen Zelena watches Emma with suspicious eyes.

She is a prisoner in this gilded cage, and Zelena is only too happy to remind her. She calls her “Little Swan” with a sickly sweet curl to her lip, and revels in reminding Emma of her lot in life. They do not break the betrothal to Neal, even after the first time he has her mocked and beaten before the people of Misthaven.

Elsa has disappeared, and Emma is grateful for that. Her sister is strong, and capable, and smart, and she does not like to imagine what the Queen and her son would do to try to break Elsa’s spirit. No. It is better that she is gone. It is better that Emma should be stuck here, that Emma should be the one they torment day in and day out. 

Neal brings her to the gates of the castle, makes her stare at the head of her father skewered on a pike, and she vows to be the one to kill him, even as she loses her nerve while he stands so very close to the edge.

\------

Zelena smiles at her across the table every morning as they break their fast, and Emma smiles back. She has grown used to it, this act, grown used to the games Zelena plays. Her waking hours are a carefully constructed lie. She bows and simpers and tells whoever might listen that her father was a traitor, her family are traitors, and that she is a loyal subject, happy to serve.

They don’t see the steel in her spine, they don’t see the fire in her heart. She will not let them see it. It is not theirs to forge, not theirs to snuff out. 

They tell her Snow is gathering an army in Misthaven, and Emma’s eyes do not waver as she sips at her spiced milk. “My sister is a traitor,” she tells them, and around her the women stare at their laps - all but Zelena, who watches her with knowing eyes, who gulps at the amber liquid in her hand and smiles an icy smile.

“And you, Little Swan? What are you?”

I am the woman who intends to kill you with my bare hands, she thinks, but she hides it behind a heavy swallow and a confused look. 

“I am whatever you want me to be.”

\------

At night she dreams of her family. She dreams of Anna, and the way her smile lights a room, she dreams of Elsa and the way her sisters eyes could skewer a person, of Henry and the tall tales he would weave from the stories Granny used to tell them. She dreams of her mother, and the soft lullabies she would sing to them all as children.

She dreams of her father, and the way he looked at her in the training yard when she finally told him she hated the bow and did not fancy herself a warrior, any longer.

She dreams of Snow, arriving at the gates on a white steed, a victorious army at her back, ready to save her.

She even dreams of Killian, once or twice. Of the way he would always steal her a slice of the first bread rolls out of the oven, skirting under Granny’s raised hands and presenting it to her with a hesitant smile, his fingers covered in sticky sweet frosting and dusted with cinnamon, his eyes downcast as though fearing what her gaze would tell him. 

She dreams of the way he held a sword aloft against her lord father as they trained, of the way he laughed when he and Snow grappled in the yard. She dreams of the way he would sometimes look at Emma, as though she were precious, as though she were something he would be willing to protect with his sharp sword and his sharp words. 

He would be a fine match for Zelena’s biting insults, she thinks, and he would not stand for the way Neal parades her about as the sullied daughter of Arendelle. 

But he has taken an oath with the navy, and she doubts she will ever see him again. 

Snow will come. She will deliver a victory over the people who have kept her captive, and she will give Emma Neal’s head on a platter.

\------

The bruises linger on her shoulders, but she does not feel the sting of their healing. Zelena sneers at her, and Neal stares at her as though imagining the ways in which he can order his knights to cause her more pain, but the news rings in Emma’s ears. Snow has crossed the sea, has broken a vow (she wonders at the kind of man who could make the honorable Snow ignore at treaty, and in her fanciful mind she imagines meeting him, of smiling and laughing with him) and her armies have snatched victories from a number of Neal’s banner men. 

Yet more Lords have joined the fight - demanding Neal and Zelena give up the throne, the whispers of his false claim to the kingdom moving swift as wildfire. 

For her name day, Neal has her stripped down to her shift before the court and lashed until Zelena reminds him that she is to be his wife. But her sister gifts her with a victory in battle, coming ever closer to the garish castle where Emma is being held captive, and the bite of the whip stings, but it reminds her that Snow is coming, that Snow will be the one to save her from all of this, and if Snow can fight battles, than Emma can withstand this.

Emma envisions the way it will feel to watch Snow’s arrow lodge in the hollow of Zelena’s throat, the way it will feel to see Neal gutted like the coward he truly is. How it will feel to wrap her arms around her sister, and leave this place to the vultures who even now battle for it to the east. 

Even so far away from the place she was raised, she knows Snow and her mother’s arms will feel like home.

\------

She cries until there are no tears left for her to shed, and then she hardens her heart and breaks her fast with the Queen and the woman who has saved her from being married off to Neal. Her name is Tamara, and she shoots Emma glances down the table while Zelena tells her in great detail exactly what they’d done to Snow and her mother - how they’d been betrayed under the roof of a man they’d called an ally, how they’d burned them both alive. “It’s fitting, if you think about it. Only fire can destroy ice,” the Queen crows, a cruel tilt to her lip, and Emma gulps down the wine set out before her.

Her fanciful daydreams feel twice as childish, now. Her family is cast to the wind, her sisters scattered or dead, her mother and father gone. 

Emma is alone in this fight. She has no allies here, no one to rally to her side, no one to save her from these monsters who rule this kingdom. 

And yet, she is still naive enough to believe it when someone claims to want to save her from it all.

\------

She hardly remembers the wedding feast - she remembers the feeling of disgust and rage at the actors hired to portray the fall of Arendelle, remembers the clenching of her stomach as his subjects toast Neal’s happy marriage. She remembers the way Tamara’s hand had curled against her hair, commenting on the glittering jewels shining around her neck.

She remembers the way Neal had looked, in the moments before Zelena was at his side, his face bulging, his eyes purpling.

She remembers thinking ‘good’.

And then she is being whisked away, while the feast around them dissolves into chaos and Zelena’s screams echo.

\------

She isn’t sure who she expects, but it is certainly not August. He tells her of his love for her family, he tells her that she has a destiny to fulfill, and Emma is too happy to be free of Misthaven to care that she no longer believes in fairytales.

For the first time since she left Arendelle, she sleeps a full night through. It feels like a sign, it feels like an answer. August will bring her home, she is certain of it.

She will learn quickly to be certain of nothing, and to trust no one.

\------

August tells her stories of the dragon across the sea. Once, Misthaven had been ruled by a cruel Queen, crueler even than Zelena, if August was to be believed. She’d gone mad with power, demanding her knights burn any who dared question her. 

Ingrid and Robin had sent armies to defeat her, fearing what she could do with such power, fearing for their own kingdom. 

Together with Hades they’d defeated Maleficent, destroyed her line, and the kingdoms had been at peace since. The marriage Emma had once wanted so dearly had been an attempt to keep that peace despite her own family’s hesitancy, for whispers of a child born of Maleficent had reached the ears of both kingdoms, and the best way to keep Misthaven and Arendelle safe was to unite their families.

“I doubt this was what they had in mind,” Emma tells August, and he smiles a clever little smile. She can learn from him, she knows. There are a great many things he can teach her, and she files away that smile for her own use.

\------

The news of the sacking of the castle in Arendelle reaches them far too late to do anything about it. She grieves for Anna and Henry, and longs for home, but August smiles and simpers and sends a letter to Camelot.

King Arthur is everything a king should be, on the outside, but Emma has come to know kings, and she has come to know men, and he looks at her and sees another pawn in his game.

He holds a great ball in her honor, and while she watches his wife dance with his best knight, he tilts his mouth to her ear and promises her the world. 

She is sixteen, and she no longer wants the world. 

“I just want to go home,” she tells the king, and his blue eyes flash.

Once, Emma had had no heart for the games of court, but she’d spent so much time with Zelena it comes easily to her now. She tilts an ear to the conversations of men who see her as little more than ornamental, she watches the way these knights and soldiers behave, and she smiles and dances and laughs, and learns their weaknesses, learns their fears, learns their deepest desires.

All the while August whispers in her ear, promises of vengeance and justice, promises of home and family. And she waits, and wonders, and hopes. 

And then the Darkness comes.

\------

They whisper of the dark magic the dragon across the sea conjures - how she’d been born again from the flames of her husbands funeral pyre, how she’s raised an army of faithful men, how no matter what seems to befall her, she always rises stronger than before.

Emma respects her. There are times when she even thinks to pray for Lily’s return to the shores her family had been obliterated from, to bring the kingdom to it’s knees and burn the place to the ground, so that something new can arise from the ashes.

There are sparks of magic all around Emma in Camelot, and as she gains the trust of Arthur’s court she begins to go in search of it.

Her mother had never spoken of it, but August tells her that the queens of Arendelle had always held sway over the magics. They’d all had their own specialties - her great grandmother could grow nature from barren ground, he said, and before that there had been Ice Queens, and royals who could raise the dead.

Her heart stills and her throat feels tight at that, and every night in her rooms before she curls under the blankets she tests the energy she can feel humming under her skin. 

She manages to singe her blankets, and vanish a looking glass, and little else. But there is an influx of magic in this place, and it calls to her, beckons her, whispers in her ear like so many before it.

The dagger is covered in fine scroll work, when she finds it, tucked into a heavy chest, and she can feel the heavy undercurrent of power as she unwraps it from the leathers it has been hidden in. 

She doesn’t mean to touch it - not exactly. But it calls to her, beckons her, invites her to take but a taste of the power it has to offer.

As with most things in Emma’s life, it offers more than she had truly bargained for.

\------

_The wind howls as it rushes around her, and her hands shake as she stares at the flaming turrets of the castle she’d once called home, and the ground shakes beneath the steady stream of men marching at her back._

_At her right is a man Emma knows, and on her left is another she does not. He is sturdy by her side, and though she does not know him, she knows she can trust him. He has that same look in his eye as Emma sees in the looking glass, that haunted look of loss that reflects back to her every time she thinks of the sister who should have been queen._

_He watches the fires lick at the sides of the castle, and she sees the way his eyes flicker with rage._

_“It’s yours, Emma,” the man to her right says, and she watches as he gestures with the metal appendage attached to his arm. He is so much older than she remembers, but he is hers, and he is here, by her side, to regain what they have lost._

_“No,” she says, and her eyes catch and hold his familiar blue. “It’s ours.”_


End file.
